Death is an Obsession
by pepperlandgirl
Summary: Spike contemplates the Potentials and Faith


Title: Death is an Obsession  
Summary: Spike thinks about the Potentials and Faith  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Part 1  
  
I sleep in her house, feet below her nightmares. I sleep below all of them and listen to their heartbeats and tears cascade around me like hail and rain.  
  
They don't invite me upstairs. They are happy to forget about the vampire, cowering in their basement waiting, always waiting. Waiting to make amends, waiting to tear their throats out.  
  
Their blood flows like a river above me, a heady invitation to decadence and pain. I can always hear their blood, it pours around me and bathes my soul. I can hear it gushing through my nightmares, casting everything in a magenta hue.  
  
They keep me apart from them, even the slayer prefers I leave them alone. So they don't know that I know them more intimately than even a lover could. I know when they dream and what they dream about. I know their fear, their joys, their resentments, when they get their monthlies.  
  
I know when they'll die.  
  
I know their power. Power bubbles and wells inside of them, kept back by the limitations of their mortal bodies, blocked by a damn of flesh and blood. They're too young, unforged by the heat of battled, untried by regrets and pain. But it is there. The Slayer strength is a demon sleeping in their flesh, waiting to be awakened by the Slayer's death cry.  
  
And though their instincts railed against them, they let me sleep in their house. My own instincts keep me awake at night. I can control it. I always could, but the control and the soul never completely overcome the hunger. Even now I can feel the blood, drop by succulent drop, in the back of my throat. Their blood will be potent. I can tell by the way it smells. Dark, sweet, poison to the soul but so good-so needed.  
  
Death is an obsession in this house, and I merely share the interest. I have no doubt they dream of staking me even as I yearn to taste them, just once. But we don't.  
  
This tension is always there, thick and heavy as a wool blanket. It is hot and sticky and nobody escapes with the stench of the tension on their skin. But we withstand this natural tug and pull.  
  
Because we're better than that. Under the Slayer's watchful, expecting eye we train for the battle.  
  
The battle will take their lives. And the thought of silence, the ceasing of the storm, frightens me more than it should. They have become the soundtrack of my life, the means of my redemption. They are children and they will not reach adulthood. At the end of the battle, I'll stand knee deep in their bones, their blood with rain down and drench my body, the ground will be fertilized by their rotting flesh, and the world will be silent.  
  
The Slayer knows this, but she doesn't expect to see it. She plans on being of the bodies again. She doesn't say this, she doesn't have to.  
  
Death is an obsession in this house. A silent, creeping obsession with black, shadow fingers reaching delicately for our hearts, enveloping our souls. My punishment will be to survive, because I always do, in this silent house, black with obsession and mourning.  
  
Part 2  
  
I had the dream again last night. This dream is not related to the soul, to the torture, to the First. It was just a random dream, totally forgettable in every way. The colors were subdued, the voices were mild--noshrieks or cries of mercy--and nobody died.  
  
I hate that dream. Lulls me into a false sense of security.  
  
The other Slayer is coming. It bothers me on a deep, fundamental level that there are two of them. It makes me nervous, uncomfortable. It's wrong. And it's hard enough for me to live with the girls, much less another slayer.  
  
In spite of myself, though, I'm excited about her arrival. She'll be a challenge. Not that I don't have enough challenges. My whole existance is a constant fight and sometimes I think I'm losing. Buffy isn't happy about the other coming back. The idea makes her tense, puts her on edge. There is a history there I'm not completely aware of. I kow the gist but not the particulars.  
  
The other slayer disgusts and fascinates me. She's an abberation, outside the natural order of things. Which rough beast lurks in the murky depths of her soul? Is that what drove her?  
  
What I know about Buffy is unique to her. I know the beast in her murky depths. I've met it, shook its hand, broke bread, broke heads, laughed and snarled, fought for the posession of the girl we both needed.  
  
I can't resist the call of the beast and I never could. It thrums through my blood, resonates in my bones. I sought it out even before I knew what it was. My love for Buffy is made more painful because she is the Slayer. It's the woman that hold my heart in her tight grasp, but it's the Slayer that makes me come back, again and again.  
  
She isn't here yet, but we're all waiting. I'm afraid. Terrified really. No matter who we are fighting or what we are fighting for, Faith is a slayer and I'm a vampire that never could resist a spot of violence.  
  
Where did we all go so bloody wrong? Was it because Buffy was brought back from the dead or Angelus's curse that lead us to this point? Did it go back further than that? Here we are, gathering in one place, and we're all abominations. There shouldn't be two slayers, and there should be vampires with souls running around. She's not here yet, but I can already feel her. I always could, in the back of my mind, at the base of my skull.  
  
I could dance with this one. I tingle with the thought of it. The fight, the violence, staring in the eyes of your equal, your better, listening to her heartbeat increase but not with fear. Meeting a warrior, hand to hand, toe to toe. You breathe her in, she washes over you, and if she's good it feels as though everything leading up to that moment was just a hollow rehearsal, and life really begins as the bone shatters beneath hard fists and you slide across the ground slick with blood. You fight as though you are two parts of the same whole, and you realize, in a distant way that if you teamed toether, you'd be unstoppable.  
  
Oh yes, we could dance.  
  
We won't, but we'll feel it. This certainty that our meeting is some sort destiny, that we're fated somehow. Angelus wanted the Slayer to teach me a lesson, and all she taught me was how to crave more. I already love the other because she is the Slayer, as much as I already hate her. I'm ready to kill her and I've never met her. Death is her art and she'll always be ready to kill me, and that constant is comforting somehow. 


End file.
